Playing has received $10.85 million worth of funding from venture capital firms. The money will be used to create an online platform where players can play together across multiple devices. I founded Playgig in January 2021. I left Riot Games in 2020 after working there for nine years. In my role at Riot, I oversaw esports and global publishing.

We are creating cross-platform, free-to-play games accessible to an expansive audience of players. March Gaming led the charge, with support from additional international investors, including Paramark from Korea, Cream from England, and Gaingels, one of the largest LGBTQIA+ allies investment syndicates.

We’ll use the funding to recruit additional talent to join our fast-growing team of 40 game developers building our first game and original intellectual property, Mystic Kingdoms, and to support our work to serve a global community of gamers with captivating experiences. We’re grateful to have our investors’ support.

The studio

We believe that games should be fun, not just profitable. Our goal is to make games that players love. Playing comprises a diverse group of developers, artists, writers, and game designers who have worked on blockbuster titles such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and DiabloIII. I am excited to take my experience building successful online communities and apply it to create a fantastic gaming platform.

The first game, Mystic Kingdoms, is a team battler set in a fantasy world. It will be fast, easy to pick up, and free to play, but it will also offer satisfying depth to players who delight in pursuing mastery. It will be playable in all significant languages, across all major platforms, and accessible to a global and diverse audience.

We’re currently testing with hundreds of players whose feedback has been incredibly useful as we continue to make our core gameplay as engaging and fun as possible. We plan to increase the number of players for our pre-alpha launch in early 2023. We can’t wait to open the game to even more players for continued testing and feedback as we move toward commercial launch.

The team is distributed across multiple countries and continents thanks to the fully remote studio culture.

Building a global team

The team is distributed across multiple countries and continents thanks to the fully remote studio culture.

We believe the best games are developed from a diversity of perspectives that allow us to think about player needs from every angle and a culture where it’s safe to take risks and tackle challenges that are at the edge of one’s capabilities. Building a diverse, world-class team with unique perspectives and experiences to help us enhance the games we develop is a core priority for Playgig as we continue to scale.

Ideas are common. However, skillful and rapid implementation is rare, so we employ great people who can get things done and possess the trait of resilience. In addition, we are investing heavily in developing our first game and original IP - Mystic Kingdoms.

Mystic Kingdoms will bring together the best aspects of MOBA games into one game that can be played anywhere, anytime, with anyone. We’ll make it easy to play and stream with friends, minimize the amount of time needed to get started and create an environment where everyone feels welcome.

Our sense of the opportunity is that the active MOBA player market is huge, but the former- and future-MOBA player market is even larger. We’re building for the next generation of gamers who will graduate from Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite. Accessibility is also key to our ambition. Throughout the history of games, there’s been a repeated pattern of success when developers prioritize making it easier to get into deep game experiences. Examples include World of Warcraft, a big step forward in inaccessibility for MMOs; League of Legends, a huge leap for the MOBA genre; and hearthstone, which opened up the TCG genre to millions of new players.

Another critical difference between Playgig and our competitors is that we have assembled an experienced management team with extensive experience building and running successful game companies. We have also recruited a number of industry veterans who bring decades of expertise to the table.

The free-to-play market is mature and largely frictionless, and that’s where the company is focusing, not on Web3.

We’re prioritizing broad accessibility and time-to-fun. We’re looking to build a long-lasting community where players feel good when they spend money on premium content related to lifestyle and self-expression. We’re not prioritizing innovation in the business model for early adopters at this stage. Read more through my blog here.

Playgig game concepts

Check out some of the concept from our potential games.

Two of our main characters combining forces as a team.

Castus’ dress reference, displaying the tattoos of his double-headed snakes.

Sobek, a lizard-humanoid character, analyzing his next move.

Another one of Mystic Kingdom’s locations that will be explorable to players.

This is one of the locations that will be explorable to players in our game.

One of our main characters Karia on a mission, along with her crystal sword.

Reference

Takahashi, D. (2022, November 3). Playgigraises $10.85M forcross-platform game studio.VentureBeat.https://venturebeat.com/games/playgig-raises-10-85m-for-cross-platform-game-studio/